Build 2013: Big Applause for Windows 8.1, But Questions About Windows Phone and Xbox One

The opening day of Microsoft’s Build 2013 conference featured a rousing keynote address by CEO Steve Ballmer and other executives, and the reception to the Windows 8.1 update was notably positive. But it is the products left unsaid that have developers here nervous. And notably absent from this year’s show is any new information about Windows Phone or Xbox One.

Microsoft’s next entertainment console factored into the keynote, but only as a throwaway, ancillary device that was relegated to a half-hidden corner at the back of the stage. Likewise, Ballmer briefly carted out a tiny podium with a handful of newish Windows Phone handsets, but they’re all running the current version of the OS, which shipped last October alongside Windows 8.

The questions here are simple: Why is Microsoft touting its ability to rapidly improve Windows 8 while the similar Windows Phone 8, released at the same time, has received no similar updates at all? And where is the hoped-for Xbox One developer platform for individuals and enthusiasts?

These questions are all the more relevant when you consider that the Windows Phone and Xbox logos and brands were as prominently displayed in pre-Build materials as were those for Windows, Office, Visual Studio and other Microsoft platforms that are a major focus of the show. But the Windows Phone sessions at Build all cover the 2012 release of the software, and Xbox One is nowhere to be seen.

My sources tell me that Windows Phone is on a slower schedule than Windows 8, which is ironic since it was Windows Phone that first pioneered the rapid release cycle now being used by the Windows team and most other major product groups at Microsoft. But then we were also told to expect news of a closer alignment of the two products, and while that’s certainly still the plan, the inability of the Windows Phone team to ship updates is hindering what is otherwise hardly a successful product.

Meanwhile, with the PR drama that the Xbox One launched into this month, one might think that Microsoft could have rallied one of its most dedicated audiences, developers, by at least promising to let them have a crack at the Windows-based console. But we’re in a weird place where a fairly minor update to the much-reviled Windows 8 is met by cheers while Microsoft simply ignores Xbox.

What Microsoft can and should offer developers is a unified development and design environment in which developers can target apps, games and services at Windows, Windows Phone and Xbox, using the languages of their choice, and the electronic distribution system its spent years developing. And who knows? Maybe they’ll surprise us today. But such an advance, one that none of its competitors could match, would surely have been the opening salvo of a developer show like Build. This is an opportunity missed.

Discuss this Article 18

The lack of any news about Windows Phone 8 is perplexing and extremely boneheaded. While it's true that WP hasn't been successful, with WP8, Microsoft finally started to get some traction. Rather than cashing in on that, Microsoft seems to have largely abandoned the platform, as is evident from the recent Skype update that left out WP.

I don't get how Microsoft thinks about unified app development. They want developers to build a Windows 8/RT app. Then they want developers to build a Windows Phone app. Then they want developers to an Xbox app! All separately. I wonder where MS has been since October. If just 1/3 of developers are interested in making Windows 8 apps, then how many developers will put in the work to make 3 versions of their app for 3 platforms?

And they better not make a product called Xbox One 8.1. I don't think they will, though.

I'll agree that the Windows 8.1 changes were better received than most of the keynote, I am not sure even that was well received. Over the years I've been to (or watched remotely) 8 or more MSDN, later BUILD conferences. This one is the most subdued I've ever seen. While Microsoft has indeed made some positive changes in 8.1, they are far from addressing the dual user interface problem... and developers know this quite well.

Microsoft is moving way too slowly. Consider the Day 3 talk: Five Great Reasons to Use the New HttpClient API to Connect to Web Services
This is basically a talk about an API in WinRT that allows simpl HTTP access to do things like REST. Why is this only just now coming out? This particular call is one that stands out in my mind, because when I was taking a very serious look at WinRT development back in October, the lack of this call (and many, many others) played a fundamental role in my leaving Windows development.

I found the addition of 3D-printing offensive, when so many other things are missing from WinRT. There is nothing wrong with 3D printing per se, its just so many other more important things need attention.

And Microsoft bragging about only 8 months between releases! Compare that with iOS or Google point release times, and its just absurd. I'll also point out it hasn't been released yet. It will be more like 10-12 months when it really releases.

From my standpoint, nothing changed in that keynote. Windows 8.1 will be rejected by consumers (and many businesses) for the exact same reason they rejected 8.0: the Microsoft-forced continual switching between the two UIs. Holiday Windows-based sales will be a disaster yet again. The good news from my standpoint is that there is a great deal of OEM experimentation with hybrids going on. Any Windows 8 hybrid design can be an even better Android/ChromeOS design.

While I was watching the keynote yesterday, I was "live blogging" in the sense I was writing down my impressions as I was watching it. I was just rereading it... my conclusion (while watching Ballmer give a summary of what was in the keynote [twice]) was that Microsoft has lost it. On reflection, things seem even worse, Microsoft seems to have no guiding, cohesive vision at all. When Windows 8 launched, their vision seemed ill thought out, but at least they did have a vision. Thinking back to Ballmer's keynote comments, he was clearly thinking in terms of what would preserve Windows, not what would help customers. I think that nails what's wrong with Windows 8.X, it is designed to promote what Microsoft wants, not what the customer wants. But it is not just Windows 8.X... Xbox One, Windows Phone 8, Azure... it's all about what Microsoft wants, not what the customer wants. Anyway, here's the link to my impressions if you're interested: http://computingcompendium.blogspot.com/2013/06/live-blogging-microsoft-build-2013.html

Oh, you mean Microsoft is doing it pretty much the way Apple did, huh? Steve Jobs made it quite clear that he didn't care what people wanted. He TOLD consumers what to like and worked the marketing to actually make it happen. Microsoft's problem is that their ideas are sound...their marketing still sucks. Nokia is keeping them afloat on that front.

What iteration are they at on HTTP access in Windows (WinInet, .NET APIs, IXHTTPRequest2, WinRT APIs, etc.)? The dirty secret is that most or all of the derivatives use WinInet under the covers. MSFT, in their infinite wisdom, doesn't allow C++ WinRT programs to use WinInet directly. It's just stupid.

You have the Win8 core, which is the best version of Windows ever released, and then you have the WinRT mess on top. All MSFT needed to do was define a simple, scalable UI API on top of Win32. Why didn't they? The only reason I can come up with is that they decided Windows sales were not going to increase in the future and needed a way to take a "cut" of the software built to run on Windows to increase revenue (after all, AAPL and GOOG get a cut of third party sales). The only way to do that is a locked down, walled garden based on a new API.

If MSFT had kept an open app environment and made incremental API changes for a scalable UI, I believe they would have flattened iOS and Android in five years. My WP8 app uses Direct3D for most of its output (it has a C# wrapper for XAML configuration pages). My C++ component code uses as much of Win32 as possible. The Win32+Direct3D+C++ combination gives excellent performance on a WinPhone, better than my competitors on iOS and Android. That validates the concept of "Windows Everywhere".

MS should just open Windows Phone up. Give the developers access to WP's core functions, and let them run with it as they could do so right now with Android.

WP devs certainly have the talent to quickly fill in the functional gaps of the OS against iOS and Android at a brisk pace, it's time to give them the tools. This way we don't need to wait on MS to give us WP users a notifications centre, nor would we see game devs complain about WP's 'restrictions' as a reason for not porting a popular iOS/Android game, etc.

No news on XBox WinRT and store.
No news on WinRT for desktop apps.
No news on WinRT enhancements for full featured apps.
Nothing new for Windows phone.

Early access to Kinect 2 for Windows in November. Even this opportunity is dampened by the fact we won't know if our order for the dev kit has been accepted until August. Its hard to get enthusiastic about planning product when its down to the random whim of someone in Redmond if our up to 500 character summary is deemed worthy.

Let me preface this by saying there are many things about 8.1 that I like although I won't be installing anything except the non-beta, finalized version of 8.1--I haven't by a long shot given up on Win8Pro! Indeed, I like using it more and more each day--makes my Win7 box feel downright clunky these days.

But some folks at Microsoft seem incredibly out of touch with their core markets of late and that is a problem I am not used to ascribing to Microsoft (although Paul says he's been seeing it accrue for years--I'll take his word for that.) How did this happen? How did Microsoft get so disconnected from the markets that made it the company it is today?

Yes, I agree the 3d-printing thing is just so...nothing...it's "nice" of course to have the driver--but why specifically announce it as if you think your customers are drooling over home 3d printers? If I'm a company doing that sort of thing commercially then Microsoft's Win8Pro 3d-printer driver isn't going to even turn my head--and I don't know any touchscreen enthusiasts who want to output to an $8k 3d-printer to make plastic toys...what an achievement [not.]

To me the idea of bragging about short release times between OS versions is similar to bragging to the world that after a lot of hard work you've finally contracted herpes! Yipeee! What is *wrong* with these folks?

The enormous *value* of Microsoft OSes to date has been their marked improvement and advance between releases--along with the fact that with every OS release Microsoft would spend years perfecting it, updating it, improving it--so that $ for $ it was the best buy of them all within a given computer system's hardware and software components. Now Microsoft wants to put out what it calls a "new" OS every year(?)--which is what the older OSes used to get in the form of a service pack, or two, or three. Yes, the brilliant idea is that Microsoft's customers are so incredibly stupid that they'll want to *pay* for service packs simply because Microsoft will call them something else. I guess that's what they are trying to say--to brag about. If not, then what?

I think that Win7 has been the most popular OS Microsoft has ever shipped, eclipsing even WinXP in that department. So what would make Microsoft think that some core GUI conventions so popular in Win7 were suddenly persona non grata for Win8? What would make Microsoft believe in the fantasy that people were throwing out their mice and keyboards for touchscreens?

The people there are terribly out of touch with their markets--is the only answer that makes sense for me. I'm very curious as to how all of this came about--the xb1 reveal was a great opportunity for Microsoft and they blew that as badly as it could possibly be blown in my estimation. They started off fine with WinPhone 8--but where's the update momentum? More and more the company is beginning to baffle me.

"So what would make Microsoft think that some core GUI conventions so popular in Win7 were suddenly persona non grata for Win8?"

The fact that the PC market has been declining consistently for a few years now. The world is moving to more mobile form factors, and PC OEMs have been desperate to get into that market. If you remember the Windows 7 launch, Ballmer showed off what was supposed to be the first of many Windows 7 based tablets. Then the iPad came out and it became obvious that Windows 7 simply could not compete in that segment.

So if you're Microsoft, you're faced with a declining market segment, you have a product that still holds a huge market share but is no use on the expanding range of mobile touch friendly devices. To carry on with an improved version of Windows 7, while music to the ears of power users, guarantees future irrelevancy. Solution? You start fresh on a brand new OS framework that will carry you into the future with touch support, power management and security improvements, an app distribution solution (app store) and you combine it with an improved version of the Windows 7 OS that is still being used by millions of people. It's certainly a reasonable solution, and beats the alternative of building a tablet version of Windows Phone 7, which would end up in the similar position as the phone OS of being a beautiful but less powerful version of its competitors with fewer apps.

Why do you need to "combine it with an improved version of the Windows 7 OS"? That's the part that gets Microsoft in trouble. You really cannot do this... the two UI paradigms clash. Microsoft should have done it as a separate OS, geared for touch. They should have given desktop Windows user's a free virtual tablet app so that they could run those apps under Windows (including Windows 7) as BlueStack and others do for Android. The tablet apps would not work as well under the virtualization app, but as it's free who would complain? They could then use the new OS as the basis of the future, including eventually taking over desktop functionality, much as we are seeing Android start to do. Microsoft would still have been able to leverage the Windows installed base without ruining most people's productivity. It would probably have been substantially less development effort for Microsoft.

I think the real reason for the duct-taped UIs was Office... they couldn't figure out how to get it onto their tablets in a timely fashion. Even now they are vaguely promising 2014... I would not hold my breath, a Microsoft promise of 2014 says 2016 in my mind. And if it is by 2016, Microsoft is unlikely to be much of a factor outside of large enterprises.

In many ways, this is Karma biting Microsoft. For years, they made Windows and Office, more and more complicated to stave off competitors. Now, in this new world of computing, those solutions simply cannot be forced into the new paradigms. Worse for Microsoft, people in general are sick of the complicated solutions.
When I first switched my business to Google Docs... I was often complaining about missing features X, Y and Z. Some of those arrived, but interestingly I found living within the limitations liberating. After I accepted the limitations, it became much easier to get things done. Far less time was spent on formatting and more on content. Similar arguments can be made for people's tablet usage. Yes, tablets tend to have less sophisticated apps than what is available on the desktop, but is that really a problem? I'm sure one can go too far either way, but I do feel both Windows and Office are way too complex.

It is a public secret that MS has given up on WP. The only thing moving there is Belfiori, who is bouncing between Europe and States like a ping pong ball.

MS simply do not believe in WP, but they need to fiddle a tad with it every once in a while owing to their partner commitments that simply cannot be undone out of Blue.

Now that iPhone is plunging towards a traditional niche status internationally, like all good Apple products eventually do, Android is clearly the (sole) future.

And so it shall be 90s all over again. The technically most inept, the most difficult to use environment (Replace Windows 9x with Android here), will eventually dominate with the most boring, uninnovative, plasticue hardware partners (replace Dell, HP with Samsung, Huawei, etc. here) triumphing.

Not unless MS just wakes up and lets the reins loose on Windows, Xbox and Windows Phone. Do it, open them up and make those environments even more open and versatile than Android -- but divert your resources to ensuring there is order to madness by giving end users the choice to have a simple vanilla Windows or to let Windows go wild on their devices.

I've said from the get go that the only way WP was going to be relevant was if Microsoft became a more nimble company in regards to updates and improvements. The traditional service pack approach and schedule would not cut it. Early on it seemed they might pull it off, but of late that has obviously not been the case. It's amazing that a company of their size, with their resources, can't manage to push out updates and improvements with any frequency. Nokia has done more with their platform than they have and are now at a point where WP8, as it is, is holding them back. The platform has managed to claw its way into a solid 3rd place position and Microsoft is letting it whither.

It would be such a missed opportunity if Xbox One was another locked down platform. Open app stores work wonderfully well on iOS and Android, and even Microsoft's own Windows Phone and Windows 8, so why not the Xbox One?

Just take a 30% cut and ensure each app/game goes through a very light approval process, then put it on the store. Let devs update/patch as often as they like too, with no re-submission.

Sony appear to be slightly more open, by allowing indies to self publish, but it's still a far cry from a proper app store.